i thought i was doing okay
Okay, well, I am still doing okay. Didn't mean for that title to sound like I wasn't. Its been more than a month now since I've deleted my instagram account, and I feel much more focused in many things. I think, though, that when I stopped scrolling instagram, I began scrolling youtube. I stopped myself today, and yesterday too, and came to that conclusion, looking for inspiration, and perhaps validation that other's are doing things I'm interested in. The more I spend looking at my youtube feed, the more I realize that its all clickbait and crap, and is designed, once again to take me away from my life.
The first video I saw upon opening up the website: I bought a 1993 Volvo 240 to drive in 2026.
Really? How does the algorithm know that my dream car is that wonderful boxy relic of another life? The first car I remembered sitting in when I was a kid. I scanned through a little bit, and its just an ad. I'm giving youtube $11 a month to get rid of ads for them to really tailor the ads to me even more carefully, so carefully that I don't realize they're ads? No thanks. I'm done.
I like the occasional video about a journaling method, and I enjoy "vlogs", really just because I think its interesting to film something fairly abstract, or compile found footage, and sort of just do a stream of consciousness monologue about whatever you're currently going through, but the majority of the stuff I am served on youtube is not this, it is either the aforementioned sales-without-being-sales videos, and videos of people doing things I love doing while I'm sitting there not doing those things.
Its no wonder we feel sad, or overwhelmingly depressed, absorbing all this content that algorithms serve us, when we're literally watching someone who has 200,000 followers and a platform full of sponsors, riding a cool vintage bike we wish we had to a coffee shop and making a video about it, while our bike sits in the corner of our apartment and we are nestled on the couch, or hunched over a laptop.
I think its time to stop giving my money to youtube, or I suppose google. I'll still be able to occasionally watch the odd vlog or tip video, but I think seeing the ads that are blatantly ads, will provide just enough friction that it will keep me from getting too absorbed in that platform. I'll close youtube and go and get lost in a book, or ride my own bike to run an errand or even just mindlessly cruise around the city.
Its weird, I know this is right, I know I will be better than fine after I no longer have youtube premium. Its always been a free service, after all. I remember in my apartment in Amesbury, in 2017 or so, making tapes from albums I discovered on youtube, I would have to pause the tape while an ad played, and then resume as soon as the ad was over.
Now that I remind myself of those tapes, I realize I don't have them anymore. They were always kept in a brown case, it looked like a briefcase. At some point in the past 2 years I must've gotten rid of it, brought it to a thrift store or something. I hope whoever has those tapes now is loving them. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of them.
I've done it with clothes, records, tapes, virtually all possessions I've had, save for the very special things I'll never part with. It feels cathartic in the moment, realizing that you don't need these things, and just dropping them off in a donation box at a thrift store. Every time I do it I feel lighter, and fresher, like a lizard shedding its skin. I still miss them though. I suppose, just like how the lizard is mostly the same after shedding, I am too. I have all of those memories, and those tapes I made, the clothes I used to wear, all of these things I've parted with still exist in my past, and they inform who I am now.